It's Critter Time!

This is the second time this has come up to me recently. There's age old advice of "don't hotlink to FA!" and it's at least valid in the sense of it being a bit rude to hotlink directly to someone's CDN like that. I'd posit it's generally good advice and, given that we can just upload images to the forum here there's no reason to ever hotlink anything like that.

That being said,

I think hotlinking actually works now? I don't think it's browser cache, unless they're doing something weird and IP based, I think this should just load.



I'm mostly just curious if it works. Again, still a bad idea, but curious minds want to know.

You're able to see it because you have it cache'd in your browser.

People that haven't visited the image via FurAffinity just see "Image" on the forums when you try to hotlink it otherwise.

Edit: In lieu of the new posts, I decided to open my Firefox's console to check exactly what it claims is the issue the embed's failed, and it reports it was an OpaqueResponseBlocking thing. Users could presumably disable this in their browsers' settings, though I'm unsure if I'd recommend that.

ElTipejoLoco wrote: Sun Oct 12, 2025 11:39 pm People that haven't visited the image via FurAffinity just see "Image" on the forums when you try to hotlink it otherwise.

I haven't been to this image's FA page on my smartphone across two browsers - IronFox which is my regular one and Cromite, but it does show up to me here.
I've tried clearing all of Cromite's data (incl cookies/site data just in case it's a matter of being logged into an account) and the image still loads up.
I can't fully investigate since I'm on mobile, but my only other hunch tells me that perhaps the forum software itself might be trying to fetch it?

nope. busted link on my end

Moot wrote: Mon Oct 13, 2025 2:21 am nope. busted link on my end

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Fascinating. Do you use FA normally?

I pulled this page up on my phone (which I've never logged into FA on) on mobile data, and it loaded. Does it 403?

403's for me too, on a browser and device that I do use FA with.

I don't see why FA would make a change so that hotlinking is allowed. They disabled it for a reason!

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plumpan wrote: Mon Oct 13, 2025 3:17 am

Moot wrote: Mon Oct 13, 2025 2:21 am nope. busted link on my end

qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqw.png

Fascinating. Do you use FA normally?

I pulled this page up on my phone (which I've never logged into FA on) on mobile data, and it loaded. Does it 403?

I view FA on mobile and desktop fairly regularly and it’s not loading on either device, presumably because I haven’t seen whatever image it is and it’s not cached my end

edit: apparently i can see it now?? this is after bringing this tab out of hibernation so i have no clue whats going on here

edit the second: gone again lmao. schrödinger's image

it looks like this on my computer where I frequently use FA as well

Very strange.

The only thing we know is it's absolutely not caching. I thought it might be a firefox/chrome thing but I tried chrome, same result.

Yeah, I don't see the image either. Once I clicked the link (which I got by quoting the post and copy-pasting it), then it showed up. So it's still the caching theory.

My advice is to use image attachments. It's not the prettiest way to do it, but it's the only reliable way for you to post images in a way where everyone can see them.

Enbyeon wrote: Tue Oct 14, 2025 12:04 pmMy advice is to use image attachments. It's not the prettiest way to do it, but it's the only reliable way for you to post images in a way where everyone can see them.

I agree, see the preamble in the OP.

Yeah, I don't see the image either. Once I clicked the link (which I got by quoting the post and copy-pasting it), then it showed up. So it's still the caching theory.

But then why does it load for me on any device or browser I try, cache and cookies be damned? It'd be nice if I could actually get it to *not* load and see what the error was.

Check if you've got opaqueResponseBlocking settings set to false or otherwise disabled in Firefox's about:config (not sure how to check the same in Chrome or Edge). Your browser(s) might just be allowing cross origin posts to succeed, which would mean that FA hotlinking is not really disabled so much as it is not set up securely(?) and so browsers with mostly default security settings treat it the same way they would a site with an expired SSL certificate or similar stuff.